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In the future it should be possible for educationally qualified applicants to be able to attend a university without university-entrance certificates acquired in a secondary school. This is meant to help ease the looming shortage of skilled labour in Germany. Facilities in the area of adult education are also to help facilitate the transition to a school of higher learning. The authors of this article report on a promising approach along these lines – the Lower Saxony model project »Open Univer…
The contribution reports central thoughts of the American psychologist Csikszentmihalyi from the book “FLOW“, and it sharpens the statements on the reality of learners and teachers. “Flow“ stands for the “optimum experience“. Therewith Csikszentmihalyi indicates a feeling of high spirits, of deeply felt joy that lasts long and that occurs when body and soul of a person is strained to limits in the voluntary endeavour to achieve something difficult and something valuable. In this condition, orde…
Mit RUHR.2010 stellt Deutschland dieses Jahr die Kulturhauptstadt Europas. In diesem Ereignis gipfelt die über die letzten Jahre wachsende Popularität von Museen und Kulturveranstaltungen. Aber Kultur ist mehr als Kulturbetrieb. Unsere Gesellschaft produziert unter den Einflüssen der Digitalisierung, Individualisierung, Migration und Globalisierung stets neue kulturelle Codes. Beide Phänomene stellen Anforderungen an die Erwachsenenbildung. Unser Land braucht eine kulturell sensible Erwachsenen…
Theme networks and the systematic generation of the new A systematization using the example of the learning regions Meta structures in the form of content orientated “topic net groups” offers a possibility for communication and exchange between the regional projects in the program “Learning Regions – Providing Support for Networks”. Thereby they build a field of communication in which practice problems and their solutions appear and therefore they can be brought to discussion. Thus topic n…
Educational research is often focused on biographies. Literacy and basic education frequently use knowledge about biographies as a means for educational support within the scope of catch-up education (“second chance”). The article discusses how biographically generated knowledge can be transferred into pedagogical practice. The authors give up on the idea of a direct “utilization” of biographical insights into practical work – the yield is rather to indirectly stimulate and irritate professiona…
Learning along biographical and career changes Based on a biographical sample from adult education centres (VHS), this article discusses the concept of research on learning environments. The factors for success will be evaluated together with reflections on how to prepare for an executive position in such institutions. This will allow for extracting conditions for learning in certain biographical settings. The challenge for learning is seen as a result of the individual’s changing reception…
Natural Sciences as a Constitutive Element of Modern Adult Education Imparting natural scientific knowledge to a socially broad audience was already quite common in manifold forms before adult education as such was really constituted in the last third of the 19th century. Some of the questions raised when natural science spread in the 18th and 19th centuries are still or again relevant in the 21st century. This paper tries to demonstrate that notion in a summarized form on the basis of an ex…
One aim of the European Commission is to improve the number of graduates between 30 and 34 years to 40?% for 2020. This requirement provides the university with new material for the promotion of this target group. Current university didactic concepts, such as mentoring programs, can be used to address these challenges. The following article gives an overview of mentoring in higher education and reports on first experiences of participants in the mentoring program “MEwiSA” at the University of D…
